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Blurring Institutional Boundaries

Judges’ Perceptions of Threats to Judicial Independence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Alyx Mark  and
Michael A. Zilis
Alyx Mark*
Affiliation:
North Central College
Michael A. Zilis
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky
*
Contact the corresponding author, Alyx Mark, at alyxmark@gmail.com.
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Abstract

The legislature wields multiple tools to limit judicial power, but scholars have little information about how judges interpret variant threats and which they find most concerning. To provide insight, we conduct original interviews regarding legislative threats to courts with over two dozen sitting federal judges, representing all tiers of the federal judiciary. We find that judges have a nuanced understanding of threats and tend to identify components of legislative proposals that threaten formal institutional powers as more concerning than those challenging policy set by judges. This distinction has broad implications for our understanding of judicial behavior at the federal level.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , Fall 2018 , pp. 333 - 353
Copyright
© 2018 by the Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

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Footnotes

We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers and editor of the Journal of Law and Courts for their thoughtful comments and helpful criticism. We would also like to thank Laura Moyer, Ryan Owens, Justin Wedeking, and our panel at the 2016 meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association for their comments on an earlier draft of this article.

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